


We Witches Three

by alephthirteen



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BAMF Fleur Delacour, BAMF Hermione Granger, Because she deserves some Hermione loving too, Dark Veela, Dumbledore never had a backup plan, F/F, Fertility Potions, Fleur gatekeeps slobbering purebloods, Fleur samples the wares, Gabrielle is a Good Egg, Ginny Weasley Needs a Hug, Hermione is so totally DONE, Hermione's wand brings all the Slytherin girls a-slithering, Light Dom/sub, McGonagall did have one, Namely her favorite student, Pansy Parkinson Bashing, Post-War, Pureblood Politics (Harry Potter), Slytherins simp for dangerous witches, Veela (Harry Potter), Veela clans are like Game of Thrones but with sex not murder, Veelas will fuck shit up, Witches are way ahead of muggle lesbians in terms of options
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:15:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28165362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alephthirteen/pseuds/alephthirteen
Summary: Fifteen hundred years ago, Camelot was raided in the night by a powerful sorceress and two prisoners were freed.  In the centuries thereafter, all wizarding girls know the names of the Witch Queens of old.  Morgana, kindly half-sister spurned once too often until she became cold and cruel. Nimueh, deposed faerie eager to return laughter and freedom to her people  Morgause, the druid priestess so mighty not even Arthur's armies could kill or lock in a nunnery.-----Harry Potter had enough.  His mum and dad were waiting in the white light of the Station After.  With the horcrux in him destroyed, he's not special.  He is so very, very, very tired.-----Hermione thought Harry might do this to her.  It's why she asked Fleur to come, even though the idea of her being hurt curdles her blood.  If she doesn't have Harry, she needs help.-----Pansy Parkinson's mum told her to climb.  Marry the most powerful, accomplished wizard she could and the galleons would take care of themselves.-----Most girls won't admit it but Daphne happily will.  Witches find magical power sexy, purebloods doubly so.
Relationships: Fleur Delacour/Daphne Greengrass, Fleur Delacour/Hermione Granger, Gabrielle Delacour/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Daphne Greengrass, Hermione Granger/Original Veela Character(s)
Comments: 49
Kudos: 220





	1. Wands Out, Panties On the Floor

**Author's Note:**

> This will be fairly light, despite it's looming-prophecy element. It's mostly a way for Slytherin girls who want to reform themselves to try to do it kneeling under Hermione's desk, and maybe have some scary-smart, curly haired half-blood babies while they're at it...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where it's down to the Golden Girl, and magic makes all the girls sigh.

**_Until a thousand years have gathered, and a thousand more are spent, you shall stand unaided._ **

**_When darkness cracks and light blazes, when all seems finally won, horrors of fang, wing and fin shall lay waste from the white cliffs to the stony shores. Dragonfire shall fall from the sky like rain. Venom most cruel shall bubble up like a spring, and merfolk shall crash against the shore like the tides._ **

**_Kingdoms three shall tremble. Mountains three shall shatter. Lakes three shall boil. Thrones three shall fall ._ **

**_Witches three, witches three, witches three!_ **

**_In our most desperate hour, when men and boy have laid us low, shall our queens return._ **

**_Clever Morgana, comely and cunning . Magic dark as the starless sky and twice as deep ._ **

**_Mighty Morguase, peerless in beauty and in terror whose wrath is like the falling sun._ **

**_Gentle Nimueh, sweet as the moonlight dew whose tears shall raise the spirits fair and fanciful._ **

The "mothers under the mountain" prophecy, a third century Welsh prophecy, commonly attributed to a famous hedgewitch. A favorite of feminist witches for its inversion of a sleeping King Arthur coming to save Britain, it also survives in muggle accounts.

Given that it predated the birth of the iconic witches of Old Britain mentioned by a full three centuries yet is in past tense, scholars universally believe it to be a valid instance of divination. Research at the Department of Mysteries began in earnest in 1950, hoping by the year 2000 – the appointed hour – the mystery could be cracked and Britain could prepare.

  
All three of the lead researchers died in the Second Wizarding War.

  
Fifteen months remain.  
  


* * *

**\-----Hermione-----**

"Don't be a git, Harry," Hermione pleads as if her stopwatch might relay the message. "We can't do this without you."

Her shaking hand holds nine miniature roses. Fred's rose is already black and crumbled. Lavender's is whirling between pink and white and growling softly. Harry's rose flickers from red to white and then back to red.

Professor McGonagall places a hand on her shoulder.

"Fleur-de-vie charm?" she whispers.

"Yeah," Hermione replies. "Fleur taught me this, appropriately enough. Two summers ago, I told her that I was afraid for her, so she gave me a dried flower that matches her heartbeat."

"So each of those is one of your friends? I'm charmed that one says Minerva."

"Yes," Hermione coughs, her cheeks pinking up. "Well. If something happened to you, I'd be terribly sad since I couldn't retake my NEWTs."

Her mentor laughs.

"Child, there's a word for the way you study. Masochism. I take it Mister Weasley's fate is the cause of his rose's wilting?"

Hermione nods.

"Nothing fancy. Nothing about the purity of their soul, or the enamel on their teeth. I'm not even sure how it's tracking Lavender's werewolf bite. Just a health meter."

"A what?"

"Muggle term. There're these things called video ga-"

Hermione shakes her head.

"Never mind."

"Another day, perhaps. We need a new Muggle Studies professor, young lady. That's another reason for you not to die. "

Harry's rose stops flickering and goes jet black before crumbling to dust. Hermione wipes a tear off on her sleeve.

"He stayed," she sighs. "The Resurrection Stone gave him a choice and…"

"After a life with precious little but fear and being used by those he should've been able to trust, he chose to stay with his family and fallen friends in the next life. Selfish, perhaps, but not a mark on his character, young lady."

"I know," Hermione gulps. "He's my friend. I suppose _I wanted to be selfish_ and get him back."

"One horcrux left," McGonagall huffs. "That cheeky snake. I'll take the Ravenclaw dueling team and any Hufflepuffs not on medic duty for a snake hunt and send the Gryffindors to you."

Hermione holds out her handbag.

"Here, professor. That's every basilisk fang we could gather. Some carving knives and whetstones. Should be enough for some daggers and throwing knives."

"Make a plan to kill him," she says, tapping her finger to Hermione's forehead. "and see it through, girl."

The Minerva McGonagall that comforted her was a teacher, a friend, and a gentle soul. Hermione met her when she was eleven and liked her immensely. Now she's in the presence of the woman who was Dumbledore's second when he dueled Grindelwald, a fact shadowed by the larger story. She put the Rosier twins down two-on-one in the most destructive witch-on-witch battle in history.

She removes her hat and takes two bundles of ivory slabs out.

"Runestones?" Hermione asks.

"Yes, Miss Granger. Fire in this pack, water on the other. These are storm and earth. I'm sure you remember enough runes from third year to do something nasty with the blank ones."

"Won't he block these?"

"Potter gave his life to bring Lord Voldemort to the brink so he's mortal now, or will be soon. He's a man, Hermione. He'll _tire_. He'll have to split his shield between what you're throwing at him and the elementals. People don't pay attention to runes, and a cracked runestone still goes off inside a shield charm. Fire just _is_ and you can't dispell or counter-curse it. So place these wherever you like in the courtyard. I'm sure you can imagine some ways water and lightning can cause trouble, or fire and rock."

"Keep him here, on a battlefield you control. Remember that there's more to dueling than curses and shields. He's strong but also arrogant, and you're nimble and smart. Think every move out. Don't waste one ounce of effort. Do that, and I'm confident you _will_ prevail, young lady."

She presses the stones into Hermione's hand.

"I'll send Miss Lovegood and Miss Weasley to help you place these. Nimueh's luck to you, young lady."

**\-----Pansy Parkinson-----**

Luna stands next to Hermione, whispering and pointing to rubble and broken torch-holders and a crack in the cobblestones.. Above their heads, a fiery clock counts down the remaining eight minutes, nineteen seconds to the end of the truce.

Daphne leans on the railing next to her. She jangles her chained wrists.

"These chains aren't so bad, actually."

"They're humiliating, Daph."

"Come on! Not like Snape didn't give worse during that one detention."

"Still think we shouldn't have gotten punished for cursing that mudblood's teeth. Don't care how good she is at potions."

"Lovegood came up behind me. How did you get caught?" Pansy asks.

"The veela. They're sweeping the dungeons. Small army."

"Veela?" Pansy scoffs. "Those trollops don't have the power to kill a church mouse. As a Slytherin, I'm ashamed you don't have the Delacour whore's head on your belt."

Daphne snorts.

"They hit harder than you might think. People were afraid of faeries for a reason, Pans. The veelas left are the daughters of ones that neither knights nor wizards killed."

She sighs.

"Besides, hard to fight when your cunt's slobbering like a starved dog in a butcher's shop and you'd tear your eyes out for a kiss."

"HARRY POTTER IS DEAD, HARRY POTTER IS DEAD!" sings an amplified, nasty female voice.

Pansy groans.

"Merlin's asshole. That woman is an embarrassment to purebloods."

Daphne chuckles.

"Her family might've been better off marrying in a muggle or two. Methinks the Blacks had a few too many rolls in the hay with their cousins."

Voldemort sweeps in with a ghastly prance–-quite a poofer, that one–-swinging his scaly hands.

"Students! You'll be glad to know that you're free!" he chortles. "No more of this Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw nonsense."

"THOMAS MALROVO RIDDLE!" Hermione bellows. "YOUR TRUCE EXPIRES IN FIVE MINUTES. BREAK YOUR WAND AND SURRENDER NOW OR FACE ME IN A DUEL!"

"Mudblood versus the Dark Lord? This'll be a laugh."

Daphne makes a gulping noise.

"Do you see her eyes, Pans? I've seen it before. In tutoring club and at our NEWT exams. That's the look she gets when she's _ready because she_ _studied_ all day."

"I've no interest in slaughtering pigs," Voldemort sniffs. "It is beneath me."

Neville Longbottom dashes up to Hermione's side, falling to one knee like a night before a queen. Laid across his outstretched arms is a bloodstained longsword with a glinting red jewel on the pommel.

"Bloody hell," Pans mutters. "Is that…"

"...Gryffindor's sword, yeah. I've never met a Slytherin that actually saw it but that sure matches the books. Don't think anybody but Dumbledore and that parrot of his touched it and lived to tell the tale."

Hermione wraps her hand around the grip and takes it from Neville.

"She's not on fire," Pansy points out.

"Bugger us all," Daphne murmurs.

"Very dramatic, mudblood. Bu-"

" _DIFFINDO!_ " Hermione roars, flicking her wand hand. " _REDUCTO! REDUCTO! REDUCTO! ACCIO INVERSI! INFRIGO!_ "

Voldemort's shield was up before she got off a single syllable.

"That was nothing," he scoffs.

"Oh," Hermione laughs. "I wasn't aiming for you. I owed Bellatrix Lestrange a debt."

Where Bellatrix had been cackling and waving her loony arms about, there's nothing but some bloodstained granite spikes that glow cherry red with heat. In the middle of the tangle is a matted, bloody lump that was either her head or her torso before the maelstrom.

"Did she just…"

"...absolutely butcher Lestrange? Yeah, Pans. She swatted her like a fly."

"Now then, Tom. Shall we? Or is the Dark Lord afraid of a muggleborn?"

Voldemort lets out an elephantine roar and launches a killing curse. The cobblestones between him and Hermione buckle, launching themselves into the air before the curse can reach her. As limestone dust settles to the courtyard, Hermione's egg-shaped shield stands strong. The lines are sharp and tidy and she keeps it quite close to her skin. Magic in it gleams bright and silvery as the moon, and its so dense it's nearly hiding her entirely.

 _Smart girl,_ Daphne thinks. _Smaller shield equals less effort._

"NOOOOO!" he roars.

She drops into a crouch with the sword in her off-hand and her wand in the other. A leather cord around her wrist has a few scraps of ivory on it.

"Fuck," Daphne hisses. "Runestone triggers. McGonagall, no doubt."

"Heathrow Airport, Tom. October 29th. Virgin Air Flight 313, London to Sydney."

"Those contraptions make such awful noise! I needed to concentrate. What of it?"

She holds the sword out straight and stiffens her wand arm, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

"My name is Hermione Granger. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

**\-----Hermione-----**

A lance of pure heat slashes from Voldemort's wand, melting the cobblestones with the radiance of it. It impacts precisely where she _had_ been before her apparition, which she target to a point between him and the Malfoy's. Lucius's halfhearted jinx smacks into the shield behind her head just as she raises it.

_He's good. But he thinks he's perfect._

Trash talking Voldemort is one thing. Fighting him is another.

He spins to attack and she dodges. She leads him across the courtyard, making him chase her back and forth, side to side and up and down. She burns each rune carefully, using them only in defense or when he blunders on top of one. She spends a water rune to stop one of his fiendfyre curses almost before it leaves his wand, filing his shield's bubble with super-heated smoke. When he leaps into the air to chase her as she uses a smoke-flight charm, she drops two of the fire runes and one of the air runes behind her and triggers them as he closes in. A massive blast of air ripples out, hot enough to vaporize the glass in the windows and boil lead tiles on the roof.

He rights himself easily before he hits the ground, but his chest is heaving. Her own lungs burn but she's more used to exerting herself in undignified _muggle_ _ways_ like jogging and mowing the garden and hopefully more able to push through the exhaustion.

He launches a series of killing curses, which she narrowly blocks with decorative stones stolen from the battlements. Gryffindor's sword makes an excellent focus for her off-hand, boosting her wordless magic beyond what she would have believed possible.

"ARE YOU A COWARD, MUDBLOOD?"

With the aid of her fae sight charm, she can see the faint smoky outline of two of her earth runes, three fire runes and one of her storm runes not three feet from where he's standing. He's so in love with his own power that his shield charm's bubble is close to thirty feet. She's yet to put anything through it but runes work just fine inside it.

_No, I'm not a coward, you overconfident twat._

"VESUVIUS!" she bellows, triggering them simultaneously by slashing the sword across the cracked halves on the cord she carries.

Stone shatters and ricochets around the inside of his shield. The growing heat of the fire rune melts it, sending fist-sized chunks of lava flying. A ball of lightning follows, filling the shield entirely. A bottled volcanic eruption roils and smokes and sparks and spits hot rock inside his shield, finally spilling its super heated contents out across half the courtyard when it breaks.

" _Expelliarmus! Accio Elder Wand! Incarcerous ferrus! Petrificus totalus!_ "

Before he can regain his wits enough to counter it, his wand is in her off-hand, massive chains bind him at the ankles, wrists and across his fingers and smaller chain crosses his jaw like a horses' bridle. She backs off the flight charm and lands fifty feet away, plunging the sword in a dead giant's guts so she can find it later.

"Your lord will be dead in seconds, Death Eaters. Decide. Quickly."

Voldemort twitches and strains against the bonds but he can't move his hands, he can't talk and he has no wand.

"Accio crystal ball!"

**\-----Daphne-----**

Pansy's whines beside her suggest she's no less affected than Daphne is. Power is power, and witches crave it. As an eligible daughter of purebloods, she's supposed to _lust for it,_ for Merlin's sake. What Hermione displayed knocked the breath out of every single onlooker. The Slytherin boys chained beside her are sweating and so are more than a few of the girls.

 _Has the muggleborn's hair always been that shiny?_ Daphne wonders. _Her shirt got torn… Her arms. Merlin, she's strong._

Hermione brings the crystal ball down on Voldemort's head. She's pinning his arms down with her knees, wand-tip at his throat.

"YOU MURDERING!"

The second blow gives a nasty _crunching_ sound, and the ball comes up bloody.

"RACIST!" she bellows, slamming the stone down again.

"SADISTIC!"

"WHINY!"

"ENTITLED!"

She brings the stone down again, and again, and again.

"TWAT!"

The crystal ball finally cracks on the chains that had been gagging him. Greasy, red and dripping with bone flecks, gray matter and all manner of awful, the shards tumble apart from each other. His shattered jaw drops free and the chains flop onto the cobblestone. Hermione gets to her feet and spits into the nasty soup where his head had been.

Daphne's guts tumble and her breath comes up short. Voldemort is dead and Hermione Granger, the prissy little thing, is still alive. Hands trembling and thighs twitching, Daphne sinks down to her knees. Pansy follows suit, along with some of their Ravenclaw guards.

She's never seen anything so scary. So amazing. So bloody _hot_ in her entire life.

Hermione staggers back, wholly spent. Hagrid catches her--he must have smashed the men holding his ropes at some point--keeping her upright long enough for Ginny Weasley to get an arm under her. Sweat gleams on her exposed forearm and her hair is drenched. Voldemort's blood drips in slimy cords from the fist clenched tight around the Elder Wand she captured.

_She took that wand from the deadliest sorcerer in ages. By force._

Thirteen pillars of blue smoke descend from the sky and slam into the cobblestones. When they settle, each reveals a Beauxbatons student in a duelist's crouch. At least four are veela. Their wings are spattered in blood and ash and many feathers, bent or torn out.

"'Ermione!" Fleur calls out, breaking her position at the tip of the arrowhead formation and rushing to take the other side and help Ginny.

She jerks her head at her fellows and they leap into action, launching a torrent of stunners into the dazed crowd of Death Eaters. Those who get their shields up in time are treated to a hail of stones from the collapsing archway and finally a huge vortex of ice and wind that knocks the stubborn ones to the ground. The veela students who launched it stand shoulder-to-shoulder with narrow pinholes in their shields as frigid air and water stream from their wands.

They coordinated that spell between them neater than many wizards could cast a smaller version acting alone.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" she gulps.

Pansy nods.

"I can't believe I'm saying this but _sweet_ _merciful_ _fuck, Daph!_ Just look at her right now _._ She's got what, a bruise or three? She already had that cut when she came out. _"_

"Yeah."

"It's awful, but I want to shag Hermione Granger until I bleed, Daph."

"Fuck," she gasps. "Just feel that _magic_ she's pumping out. The heat of it."

 _What's the point of being a pureblood,_ Daphne wonders. _If_ _that's what a muggleborn's aura feels like on my skin?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know why the idea of Hermione going for a killing blow that's not only non-magical, it's fully cavewoman is so appealing, but once it occurred to me I just had to include it.  
> \-----  
> Vesuvius isn't a spell, it's the name of the volcano that flattened Pompeii. Hermione is replicating a pyroclastic flow (giant cloud of superheated rock and ash) and she thought if she said it like a spell, Voldemort would be wracking his brain trying to think of the counter spell.


	2. Taking the Child's Price

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where the paperwork needs doing, Fleur's a good guest, and Ginny Weasley is a dangerous creature.

_Being alive is all well and good but the dead don't have to do paperwork. Turns out the reason is they're shite at it._

\-- Howard Gaunt, a self-styled 'nonviolent necromancer' of the 15th century as quoted from a trial when he was accused of animating three muggle corpses from a nearby churchyard so they could assist with his letters and his library.

* * *

\----- **Fleur** \-----

(one day after the battle)

Despite its spartan, antique furnishings, Hermione's dorm room feels like her own. Even in the cramped confines of the carriage, Beauxbatons provides better beds, sheets and pillows.

The lumpy pillows leave a lot to be desired, but the woman tucked against her is lovely. The coarse cotton sheets around her don't mean anything because a sleeping hand is splayed over her belly, the fingertips creating five searing points of fire that seep into her through the skin. The magic pounding through Hermione brings her veela to the surface, fierce and frothing at the mouth like a mare in season. Fleur too, standards and fancy human morality be damned.

 _What would mother think?_ She wonders. _To have my mate, this woman, in my bed after that and just sleep? Not be on my belly, begging to be filled with her daughters?_

Fleur was too scared to channel her allure after the fight yesterday, but her nose and tongue were not numbed. She could taste it around her, feeling it from the other side. It was like being a dip in the ground in which the lusts of others flowed. Most interesting was at dinner, where Hermione had been comforting Ginny with Gabrielle's help. Until people spotted her, Fleur was an invisible monitor of the moods of the room. Across the dining hall, a few Ravenclaws sat whispering and giggling. A Hufflepuff missed her mouth three times eating porridge and enough Gryffindors to make a lion pride were licking their lips. Most amusing a snake pit's worth of Slytherin girls whose auras licked out, anything to get at Hermione's aura and the simmering waves of magic coming off her like summer air on cracked soil. Too many generations spend marrying to preserve powerful bloodlines mean that those not mad or dumb from inbreeding were selected. Bred to purpose, like greyhounds are for speed and in the case of daughters, taught that 'wife' and 'mother' are their chief purpose.

They would love to be lashed to this bed, hammered by Hermione's 'strap-on' contraption with fertility potions dribbling from their lips. The blonde one–Greengrass, was it?–was panting like a racehorse. Her beloved is simply too much of a gentlewoman to have spotted it.

"Pidge?" Hermione mumbles.

Her face is mushed into the pillow and her brown hair fans out behind her like a tropical river in spring. Lacking and grand romantic things to whisper into Hermione's ear, she gathers it up and starts to braid it.

"Yes, kitten?" Fleur asks, returning the pet name with one of hers.

"Let's stay in, hmm? The funerals don't start for a couple days. I just need to feel…"

Her face crinkles and _lovely_ _Titiania!_ how terribly Fleur wants to lick the furrow out of her brow.

"...alive, I guess. Let's just lay in and sleep. Get up when we're hungry and I'll make waffles for dinner. Please?"

"Ze woman I love is in my bed and wants me to stay?" Fleur jokes. "Zat is an awful tragedy, no?"

Hermione groans. "I sprained muscle groups I didn't know I had…"

Fleur slides the sheet down to pool across her hips, and pats her breast. With a roll of her eyes, Hermione lays her head down, fidgeting until she has her ear pressed flat to the skin.

"S'cozy," she admits. "How are you so perfect, Fleur? And don't give me any bullshit about a veela being a tool of the Pact. You're not a melon baller or a potato peeler."

Fleur slides a hand down Hermione's shoulder blades, mapping which bruises to avoid by which make Hermione fidget or whine.

_There it is. Poor creature._

She presses three fingers into the knotted cord of sinew and Hermione moans, breath hot and damp on Fleur's chest. Longer, louder and filthier than any moan that Fleur ever dragged out of her in their lovemaking.

"Like that, doll. Just like that," her ravenette goddess coos.

"Veela _are_ an expression of ze pact, 'Ermione. She gave us wings, and beauty and in return, we dedicate ourselves to love, and family, and ze gathering of power for 'er. Just as you are an expression of your parents love for each other, we are an expression of our debt to 'er."

"Ohhhhh…"

"Mmm," Fleur sighs. "I like ze way you feel like zis. Relaxed."

"Only for a little time are we children. When ze allure begins in puberty, zat is when we become less 'uman. And when we meet ze one ze Mother of Winds made for us, we change again. My body is magic as much it is flesh. So it stays lovely, because you enjoy looking at it. Touching it. Ze changes are subtle. When you want to 'ave your way with me, ze allure makes me somezzing that even you, my love, so strong against it, cannot 'elp but bite, and paw and suck on. When we lie 'ere like zis, and we want to be soft and cuddly?"

"Your breasts get a bit softer," Hermione mumbles. "Warmer, too."

"Zey are fun, aren't zey?"

"Shh, you weird little sex birdie…m'tired and being with you makes me happy."

Fleur snorts. Truly unbecoming of the lady-in-waiting of the Lyons flock.

"Sleep, 'Ermione mine."

Fleur presses a kiss to the top of Hermione's head. The easy, loose stillness of Hermione's body as she falls back asleep drags Fleur under. She dreams of Hermione, and love, as she will every night of her life.

It's sunset when Fleur stirs and one of Hermione's roommates is standing by her bed, trunk packed and a frown on her face.

"Can I say goodbye to my friend, or is she starkers and sweaty under there?"

"Nude, yes. Unfriendly, Parvati? Never."

She shakes Hermione gently.

"Parv wants to say goodbye."

"Parv?" Hermione mumbles, blinking madly to get the sleep out. "You're leaving?"

"Yeah. Mum wants us home. Sent half a dozen howlers. One praising me and Pads for making it through and five telling us to get home or she'll send the cousins after us and lock us in a tower when we get back. Besides, word is that McGonagall is going to shut down for a while. Repairing the castle will take three months or more and I bet she wants us to go home, work through the hurt and come back. People are saying maybe we start term with a Yule ball next year."

"Write us, yeah? I'm sure mum's triggered the in-betweener charms by now. So the summer house sort of does but also doesn't exist. You can send it to the apothecary. We'll be working there. Get a feel for the family business."

"Of course, that makes sense.."

Hermione flops her half-asleep hand out and Pavrati catches it after a few tries. She squeezes tight.

"Thanks, Hermione. For everything."

"Thanks for being a friend."

Parvati taps her wand to her trunk, which levitates up and floats obediently behind her. At the door, she stills and then looks back.

"Speaking of, there's a zoo's worth of songbirds and parrots in the owlery. Driving the school's birds nuts. I think one or two of them are actually quetzalcoatls."

"Zat will be ze veela flocks, 'Ermione. We do not use owls, unless we must."

"That and McGonagall is keeping a cork in the pureblood posturing down there but she'll need you to check in soon. The debates and votes coming up will be nasty. You're a powerful woman now, if you want to be. I don't envy you."

"Pick what?" Hermione asks.

"That does it. I'm sending aunt Sathya to give you a crash course."

Parv bonks her head gently on the door frame, then turns around.

"Hermione, you realize that you have claim to a whole pile of noble houses now? Sign them away in wills and contracts, carry them on. Set up any cute relatives you've got or just dissolve them and give the money to the common coffers. You'll want to pick at least one house so you have a vote in the Wizgamot and some hold more votes than others."

She counts on her fingers.

"Delacour for...obvious reasons. But I don't think there's a veela house here, so probably no Wizgamot votes from it."

"Lestrange, by right of conquest."

"Moody, by shedding blood in their service."

"Tonks, at least as a regency until Teddy is of age."

"Yaxley, by right of conquest because it turned out that snake you summoned killed that murdering loon in the night."

"That's before you get into the Slytherin slags down there who saw you in action and would give their left tit to carry a baby with Granger blood. Parkinson is talking so much shit about Malfoy fleeing with Millicent that I think that engagement is off. Astoria's dead. Switched sides when some were-badgers tore into second-years. Daphne Greengrass…I don't think she lifted her wand. Her hands are clean."

"Zose girls would marry you with a snap of ze fingers, 'Ermione."

"That's ridiculous, Fleur."

"I'm veela. I can feel my allure go out and feel other people's lust come in."

Hermione groans.

Parvati folds her arms.

"Look up the Ballad of the Bastard in magical history section of the library, Hermione. It'll give you a hint of what it's like to be a hormonal teenage witch watching something like that happen before her very eyes. Boys too, but you can't really tell because they're always trying to put their prick in something."

"That's a worse mess than Umbridge's rules. I'll need to write, often."

"I'd love that. I don't know the players, but Indian pureblood houses use similar rules."

"Any advice?"

"Burn down Yaxley. That name needs to die. Moody? Not much of a fortune there, but a good reputation. Either marry off a magical relative if you can find one, or incorporate his crest on your coat of arms. That's called a badge of remembrance. The Tonks ladies left are in America. Real sweethearts, I hear. So go talk to them."

"Kill any Lestrange I missed," Hermione huffs.

Fleur covers Hermione's trembling hands with her own.

"No, love. Visit France with me. Zere may be more to zat 'ouse than you realize."

 **\-----Ginny Weasley-----  
** (two days after the battle)

Three tests. Three positives.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck," Ginny hisses.

"You sure these work on witches?" she hollers through the door.

"Our physiology is almost identical, Gins. Less so when it comes to reproduction but we're still human _._ Can I come in?"

Ginny lays the tests out.

"Sure."

Hermione opens the door, her eyes darting to the test, then to Ginny's tears.

"He got me on the third try," she jokes. "Honeyduke's back room. During a scouting run I did. Judging by when I started being late."

"Merlin… Gins, I'm s-"

"Don't," Ginny hisses. "Don't you dare feel sorry for me. Because I don't."

 **\-----** **Kingsley Shacklebolt-----  
** (six days after the battle)

Behind him, the barn Arthur Weasley keeps is a blazing ruin. Scorch marks and craters litter the barnyard. In the center of it stands a young woman, tall but with a slender build. The witch in front of him is cloaked, hooded, and twitching with tension. She remains in a fighting stance but her back is to him, a small comfort given the absolute maelstrom she just unleashed. Every detector in the auror's Room of Reconnaissance went off at once.

"Wand down! Now!"

Cracked splinters of wandwood fall out of the cloak's sleeve. Bloody and burnt. Enough for five wands. Maybe more.

Her own wand slides into her hand and she offers him the hilt without turning around.

"It's done," she sighs.

"What's done, miss?"

She draws herself up and lowers her hood, spilling a river of red hair out. She unclips the mask that covered half of her richly freckled face.

"I, Ginerva Weasley, pure blood daughter of Molly Weasley, once Molly Prewett and daughter of Arthur Wesley, announce that those who slew the heir to House Black have paid the price for my debt of tears, worked by the hand of the one they scorned."

Kingsley swallows.

"The widows and child's price," he murmurs. "Bloody hell, miss. You know how to give a fellow gray hairs, don't you?"

She nudges the wands apart with her boot.

"These are the wands of every Death Eater asshole that ever drew my blood or Harry's."

"I'll have to take you in, miss."

"I know. Fetch a mediwitch and a blood-reader from the Directory and you'll find I'm not lying, the bloodline is mine and Harry's and these men were half-blood or pureblood. I am well within my rights as a noblewoman."

"No unforgivable curses were cast tonight. No illegal spells. The final blows were my fists and that knife, not curses. You'll want to call the police about the land mines though."

"Bloody hell."

"So many of those left near the old airbases," she jokes. "A lift charm will move one but apparating down on top of one sets it off. I lowered our wards on the barn and these scumbags pounced. They attacked a Weasley on claimed land."

"My child will take a seat one day, Kingsley. I cannot prevent him or her from making their own enemies. But _my_ enemies will not survive to be _theirs_. I'm sure you can guess which ones I never found. Find them. Put them in Azkaban. For their own safety."

 **\-----** **Hermione Granger** **\-----  
** (ten days after the battle)

Fleur's apparition is gentle, almost lazy as she sets them down at the edge of the circular yard around the Weasley's. In the small family plot ringed by a grove of ash trees there's two freshly-covered graves with the merest dusting of clover shoots.

_They must've gotten Percy's body back from the Ministry._

The Burrow is shrouded attic-to-doormat in black linen, and the torches lining the vegetable garden are burning black flames.

Sirius' motorcycle sits under another shroud, and a chest for wands with dozens of separate locks is on a table by the door. All but four of the locks have had their keys removed.

"Looks like everyone else has arrived."

"Ginny?" Fleur asks.

Hermione scoffs.

"How do you think? She's the grieving daughter of Molly Weasley who just found out she's pregnant. I've been helping her when I can. But when she loses her temper, it's like holding trying to comfort a tornado."

"She's got ze best maman any witch ever 'ad, 'Ermione. She'll 'ave so much support."

"I know. When I went to pick her up after her hearing, I had to pinch myself, Fleur. Her eyes looked _exactly_ like Molly's did when she attacked the Carrows after Fred died."

"Foxes are fierce, my little lion. Especially a vixen with a kit to care for."

Fleur slides her arm around Hermione's waist.

"Shall we, love?"

Molly greets them with a hug, almost yanking Fleur's petite frame off the carpet with the force of it. With one of her heels already off, they just decide to go barefoot together. The enchanted wicker basket by the door splits apart and the strands curl out, lifting the shoes up onto a nearby shelf.

"You all right, loves?"

Hermione sighs.

"We'll keep. Ginny?"

"Terrifying," Molly admits. "Amazing. I'm proud of her. When I'm not being scared of her. You think you're ready to have grandkids and then you find out that your daughter swore an oath of betrothal in the woods, lost her virginity and got knocked up. You only find out when the aurors call to say she got picked up after going on a cold-blooded killing spree. One that is somehow legal under some old as dirt law from pre-ministry druidic priestesses."

She shakes her head.

"I'm glad that the people who hurt her and who would come after her and Harry's kids are dead. Just...I never wanted my daughter to be a killer."

"If it's any consolation," Hermione sighs. "No one plans to be a killer. I wasn't planning to be one myself when I woke up that morning before the battle. When it came to it, I acted."

"Where's the reading?" Fleur asks.

Molly whips her head around. Fleur is leaning by the sink, looking out over the garden while one hand slowly pushes the cold press down.

"Fleur!" Molly grouses. "You're a _guest._ Get away from there! Merlin, your kind moves quietly."

She waves her arms madly and Fleur shrugs. The liquid, slow grace of the movement makes the black silk of her shawl flutter. She pads over with two cups of coffee in one hand and a tea in her other hand for Molly.

"You were almost out of coffee. 'Ermione, zat one is yours. Two creams and one sugar."

"Thanks, doll."

"Of course."

Molly chuckles.

"Doll?"

"We watch zese old movies togezzer."

"She got it either off _A Streetcar Named Desire_ or _The Maltese Falcon._ "

"What do you call her?"

Hermione smiles over the rim of her cup.

"Pidgeon."

The guests filter into the parlor. Kingsley Shacklebolt is there with a wide roll of parchment under one arm and a small trunk under the other. It's quite the crowd. Arthur seems to have expanded the room and conjured extra armchairs. All the Weasley elders are here plus Charlie and Bill along with Aberforth Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, Seamus Finnegan, Dean Thomas, Katie Bell, Cho Chang, Luna Lovegood, Neville, Lavender, the Patil girls, Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass. Poor Lavender Brown had to come wearing a lace trimmed-muzzle.

Hagrid leans in the open window, his crushed-velvet suit, neatly brushed beard and shaggy hair making him seem rather like what a mall Santa looked like when he was a young man.

Ginny and Gabby are alone on the couch. Gabby's feathers are out and she's running a down-covered palm soothingly over the back of Ginny's head.

Ron isn't here but no one really blames him. Since Harry died, the name of the game has been to make sure he eats, drinks water and sometimes bathes.

There's even a slender female house elf with cutely rounded ears and massive blue eyes as well.

_Dobby's relative? Niece, maybe?_

Her little fist is curled tight around what looks like a cap poking out of Draco's suitcase. He must have asked her to keep track of it without realizing that a piece of clothing was exposed.

"All accounted for?" Shacklebolt asks.

"Seems like, aye," Hagrid replies.

"Professor McGonagall?"

Shacklebolt unfurls the paper. She stands and takes it from him.

"He first made the will at the start of fifth year, after Voldemort returned. He had help from Dumbledore, Flitwick, and several enchanters for the Wizgamot ordered off-the-books by Sirius Black. I need to remind you that just because the will can adapt to certain events, doesn't mean it's Harry. Nothing brings the dead back."

She gestures to a stack of parchments.

"The spell in the will can accept letters. If you'd like to take a moment, write on the letter and burn it in this candle. If you have questions about bloodlines or the like, prick your finger and mark the page."

People pass around parchment. Quills run out long before writers and Hermione pulls a pack of ballpoint pens from her purse.

"Brilliant!" Arthur chirps. "It's got its own inkpot!"

The crowd treats him to a knowing and pitying chuckle. Ginny goes first, finishing her letter before pricking her thumb, smearing her lips and pressing a kiss to the parchment.

She hands McGonagall the paper to put in the candle.

" _Revelio."_

A tap of McGonagall's wand to a single dot of black ink in the far corner sends the blot out, becoming something quite like a charcoal sketch of Harry's face. It smiles at them and words appear beside it.

**"I, Harry James Potter, son of Lily Potter, once Lily Evans and James Potter, the inheritor of House Black, being of sound mind, known blood and proved magic, do hereby declare this to be my last will and testament."**

**"I swear that I am influenced not by charm, nor potion, nor hex, nor curse."**

**"I swear that I have claim to that which I offer."**

**"** **If you're reading this, I hope you're all old and gray and I was too. Except Hermione. She's likely bald, after all those hair-sleeking potions.** **"**

McGonagall motions to Ginny.

"Burn the letter, dear."

Harry's portrait opens the letter on his side.

**"Ah. I died a bit younger, then. Only Hagrid and McGonagall are gray at this point."**

**"** **Ginny dearest. I cannot give you what I want to, which is more time together. I pass on my father's Wizgamot votes to you and I anoint, induct and ennoble you as the Lady of House Black, to take up its votes, titles, lands, trusts and properties immediately. By these words, I change the blood wards on 12 Grimmauld Place so as to make you the sole permitted person therein. May this manor serve you well in your Ladyship. I leave you** **any and all titles, lands, trusts and properties of my father** **'** **s, plus the** **c** **ontents of my Gringott's vault, save 10,000 galleons for each of our children's education. I leave you** **sixty-five** **percent of the vault of House Black as well, saving** **ten, ten and fifteen** **for Ron's family, and Hermione's** **and House Weasley, respectively."**

 **"** **Now that the posh bit is done, I leave you the balls from our first quidditch match together. The quaffle you won the game with, the bludgers--mind the chains on those--and the snitch that broke my glasses.** **Also, the shares** **H** **ouse Black holds in Nigel Nimbus' Exceptionally Excellente Broomes and Brushes Company and the address of the Liverpool Lamias quidditch club."**

Harry's picture smiles.

**"Twins? Weasley thing, I suppose. Fred and Lily, you say? Brilliant choices, love. You'll be a smashing mum."**

**"Be well,** **my little** **fox. Be well,** **keep flying,** **and be happy, once you can. Don't tell our children** _**too many** _ **stories about Hogwarts, maybe? Don't want them afraid to attend."**

**"It is so ordered."**

The red cloth laid over the coffee table ripples and a chest emerges along with a pair of signet rings, a cast bronze quill, and a sheaf of papers. Molly tries to hand them over and Ginny bats her mother's hands away and collects them into her lap.

"I believe Master Draco has an appointment," McGonagall suggests. "Any objections?"

"None whatsoever," Pansy huffs.

**"To Draco Malfoy, the well-meaning git, I return his wand to him along with three basilisk scales, once each for himself, Narcissa and Lucius. Also sheets of shed basilisk skin, so as to remind him that a snake can always shed the bad and improve itself."**

Harry's picture smirks.

**"You really were the best schoolyard arch-nemesis a bloke could want."**

The inheritance rises from the cloth and Molly hands it over. Draco doesn't seem able to work his limbs, or his jaw judging from how it's hanging open.

"Merlin," Daphne mutters. "I think it broke Malfoy."

She bumps her teacup into his chin so he quits gawping.

"Come, Bitsy."

Bitsy looks up with sparkling eyes at Draco and plunks the bowler hat from inside the suitcase on her head.

"Master Malfoy has given Bitsy a hat, sir. Bitsy hopes Master Draco has a lovely trip. She will stay here until Mister Ronald is better."

Daphne cackles so loud her chair tips back.

"You twit! Your family is going to _accidentally_ free the house-elves at this rate."

Draco blushes and rubs the back of his neck.

"Right. What's done is done. But I didn't mean to do that, so I don't want to hear about it in the paper, _Granger."_

"If I told this story, _Malfoy_ ," she purrs. "I wouldn't be able to enjoy it privately."

"Miss Greengrass, would you like to go next?"

She shakes her head.

"I suspect me and Pansy's are because of a group thing. I'm fine where I am."

She looks at Hermione when she says this.

"Your letter, miss Granger?"

Hermione tips the corner of her letter into the candle.

**"Hermione, old friend. You more than anyone else kept me safe at Hogwarts. Ron kept us putting one foot in front of another, and I kept getting into trouble. You were the one who bailed us out and taught us to bail ourselves out. Though I think you were being nice when you said we'd gotten good at saving ourselves. To you, I leave my cloak and the Marauder's map. Can't think of anyone who'd make safer and better use of it for the students of Hogwarts."**

**"As the person most in tune with the muggles, I also leave you Sirius' motorcycle and his collection of schematics for his little trinkets, and some sketches of Fred and George's more pratical inventions. Finally, the deed and title to my uncle's house at Four Privett Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. It was boarded up and I'm sure the garden's wild, so God help you with the neighbors across the way. There's excellent muggle schools nearby and the town's not too far from London. Plus, it's big enough for you and Fleur to nest in, if you like."**

**"For the rest, I suggest you check the trunk inside the cupboard under the stairs. It will open if you touch your wand to it three times and say the words you said to us the first time you and Ron and I had a row in first year."**

**"Be well, Hermione Granger. More than any of us, you showed what magic _can and should be_ in the hands of good people."**

**"It is so ordered."**

"Mister Weasley," McGonagall calls out.

 **"To Arthur and Molly Weasley, the parents I actually** _**had,** _ **I leave the following. To Arthur, one copy of the collected issues of** _**Arcane Anarchists All-Encompassing Advice for Artificial Amalgams** _ **magazine. W** **hile not exactly legal, this** **is what Sirius used to make the motorcycle** **and a few other muggle-inspired bits and bobs I found.** **Try not to blow anything up or Molly will reincarnate me and box my ears.** **Thanks for being my dad."**

 **"** **To Molly, I return the sweater you sewed me for Christmas first year, and a copy of Lily's family cookbook and the Potter family bible we recovered from the ruins of the house in Godric's Hollow.** **Thanks for being my mum.** **"**

**"It is so ordered."**

Aberforth is next, rising without speaking and burning his letter.

**"Aberforth, to you I leave the trophy Ariana won in arithmancy in third year, along with those mementos we recovered from Dumbledore's office. I know you two didn't see eye to eye, but you did both love your sister."**

**"It is so ordered."**

Harry's sense of gift-giving is quite touching. Lavender must have mentioned her werewolf bite in her letter, because he leaves her Remus' old wolfsbane potion kit and little black book. Hagrid gets his umbrella back-–sputtering that he hadn't known it got nicked--which it is strongly hinted contains his repaired and functional wand.

Hagrid gets some books about creatures from the Black library and guardianship of Teddy Lupin, which nearly makes McGonagall faint at the thought of a natural-born werewolf toddler who's also a metamorphmagus getting up to things with Hagrid for a foster father. Harry admits to not knowing if there are any Tonks left but suggests he check.

Cho Chang gets what's left of the Ravenclaw diadem and Harry's schoolbooks and quills.

Luna gets a collection of binoculars, nets, specimen cases and goggles to help her prove the existence of nargles and wrackspurts.

Neville gets some Devil's Snare seeds and the chair he was in when Hermione stunned him as they headed to the third floor hallway in the first year.

Charlie Weasley gets the pygmy dragon Harry got in the fourth task and looks happier about it than most men do on their wedding day.

Professor McGonagall gets his father's notes on his unauthorized animagus transformation and Sirius's notes on making the Marauder's map, plus the location of some previously unknown secret passages, and the site of cliff-side outlet of the Chamber of Secrets.

Pavrati and Padma get the contents of his closet at 12 Grimmauld, curiously. Padma blushes darkly and admits that she thought she'd 'look cracking' in one of his tuxedo-like robes if it could be re-tailored.

"Miss Delacour?"

Fleur looks up at McGonagall.

"Which?"

"I'm not sure. I just have a feeling that the will wants you to give it letter."

"Curious."

She scribbles out a quick note and burns it.

**"To Gabrielle Aveline Delacour, I leave the knife I wore in the lake during my second task."**

**"To Fleur Estelle Delacour, I leave my egg from the Triwizard Tournament's first task along with the perch and birdcage for Fawkes the Phoenix. No guarantees he'll come but birds of a feather and all that…"**

Fleur sniffs, hurriedly scrubbing a tear away.

"Silly boy."

**"Fleur, I also leave you a warning. Never break my best friend's heart."**

**"It is so ordered."**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our little fox will need some time alone, but her and her veela roomie will return later on.


	3. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Berliners get jealous, the Parthenon has a good hair day, and Hermione and Fleur take the saddest vacation in witch history.

_"If the obliviatus curse isn't the Fourth Unforgivable Curse, why is it only legal to practice on muggles? I have been an auror for thirty-eight years. I assure you...when we think we've fixed it? Covered every gap? Created enough semi-credible horseshit to replace the actual memories? We haven't really fixed it. Someone we missed always remembers or the muggle spots some truth poking through the horseshit."_

_**\--**_ From a protest lodged with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement regarding the psychological risks of removing memories during the triannual review of department policies.

* * *

\----- **Fleur** \-----

(eleven days after the battle)

She knew Hermione was _brave_ but traveling by strictly muggle means to Australia gave her a new appreciation of it. Hermione was adamant that they not use magic in airports--something about 'terrorists' whatever they are--because the muggle police have them so thoroughly stuffed with sensors and cameras that something as innocuous as the heat from a drying charm might trigger an alert.

When the infant threw up on the seat next to them, Hermione called over one of the 'flight attendants' and then followed up her scrubbing with some ghastly-smelling green froth her parents favor at their clinic. Fleur would have incinerated the cushion and conjured a new one.

Witches can clean with their hands but for the worst of it, a wand three paces back will always be preferable. Bathing a child, or washing a pot after a good meal are pleasures of their own. Scrubbing a toilet or shower tile, less so.

Hermione's hands have never been anything but clean and soft and lovely and thus Fleur assumed incorrectly that she had an equally deep collection of skin-care products to go with her hair potions. She has one anti-acne potion. The rest of the bag is made up of muggle favorites she developed before Hogwarts and over the summers.

Her nighttime ritual takes thirty minutes, rather than five or six it takes for Fleur to let each potion sit before swallowing another. Then again, watching Hermione rub lotion into her breasts and her lean, hard-muscled legs after every shower does make an excellent case for the untouchable superiority of muggle beauty regimens.

So much so that Fleur doesn't notice Hermione was speaking to her.

"Fleur?"

Fleur's eyes follow the tiny motions of Hermione's breasts as she settles into the hotel's bed. Cheaply furnished, aggressively cleaned and rather chilly...the chill particularly has simply _magical_ effects tonight.

"FLEUR!"

"Yes, love?"

Hermione's lips curl into a smile.

"My eyes are up here."

"Right."

"Poor dear," Hermione teases. "Come on, then. Come to bed. Our flight out is _early_ tomorrow."

Fleur nearly tears the bathrobe in half baring herself and climbs into bed. She throws her hips over her lioness and bends down to claim her lips.

"You…" she says, pressing a kiss to Hermione's lips.

"…are very…"

"...brave."

She doesn't pull back, instead savoring the swirl of breath and perfume between their faces and the lotion's scent–-orange and vanilla--that crowds out everything else.

"How's that?" Hermione whispers.

"I wouldn't have touched zat cushion except with fire."

"Which we absolutely cannot do on an airplane, Fleur. Correct?"

"Mmm," Fleur replies, rubbing the tip of her nose against her lover's. "So you say."

With a surprising and _dazzling_ surge of physical strength, Hermione dislodges her and plops her on the bed beside her.

"Down, girl! I can't believe muggle travel makes you so randy. We have to get up early."

**\-----Hermione-----**

(twelve days after the battle)

Traveling with Fleur was marvelous when their plane stopped in Berlin. There they had a longer layover and somehow wound up in a rave in the industrial district. Prussian women stared hatefully at Fleur as the superior specimen drew every man's eye. Gentlemen prefer blondes, perhaps. If a veela is an option, there's really no contest. Just before closing, she staggered into the alley with Fleur on her arm, splashing their cheap lagers in the process. Her pigeon cooed so sweetly as Hermione's tongue traced the foamy trail in reverse, starting with the droplet on her belly and chasing up to her collarbone. They ended up apparating out when some killjoy decided to report Hermione for being knuckle-deep in her writhing, gasping girlfriend up against a filthy brick wall.

In Athens, the sunset behind the Parthenon blazed as it shone on Fleur's mane as they sprinted to a bus. Hermione used a stopwatch and a map to estimate when they were passing over Lesbos and Fleur listened with rapt attention at the muggle side of queer history.

Mecca is terrifying. There's no hiding a veela's good looks. In a culture where women are punished for men's behavior, that's a problem. Her headscarf is a basic one from a shop inside the airport where only women can enter. It's just a wide strip of silk in a Beauxbatons blue.

Old ladies hiss things like 'foreign whore' in Arabic and scowl at them. It's only a matter of time before the religious police are called. She's kept her wand in her sleeve, ready to be drawn in an instant. Being the Elder Wand, it sizzles and shakes in her grip as if to remind her she _can_ kill them and thus she _should_ kill them.

It's pure torture having to walk a full pace away from each other and not holding hands.

"Are you keeping a handle on your allure, love?" Hermione demands out of the corner of her mouth.

" _Oui_ ," Fleur replies. "I am pulling it in. Unsuccessfully, I zink."

Hermione whispers an incantation for a mirror charm. Three swirling clouds of water droplets gather in front of them before joining into thin, reflective discs. She sends one behind Fleur's head and bounces the image onto the other two.

"It's your hair, love."

"My 'air?"

"Yeah. Hair is supposed to be covered. Not a lot of blondes in this part of town, so you're exotic. It's coming out in the back."

Through a pitiful little mime act, Hermione explains to Fleur how to tuck it back in.

One of the whip-brandishing religious police stops them, accusing them breaking laws around immodesty and virginity for Muslim women. Fleur's wearing her silver crucifix so it's not as if he doesn't know he's being a corrupt cunt about it. Hermione balls up frustration of a half-mile walk in the baking sun while listening to of non-stop slurs about Fleur, and purges it by body-binding him and tossing him face down into a spice basket. Wasabi, she hopes.

The crowd loses its mind and Fleur grabs her hand and they apparate away.

\-----

Fleur looks puzzled. Not by Sydney airport—how puzzling can an airport be?--or by the Aussie slang that gives magical Britain a run for its money in terms of unnecessary duplication of words. She's somehow confused by everything, all at once.

"Taxi!" Hermione hollers, boosting her voice with a charm.

"It is…"

Fleur scowls.

"It is right side up."

"What? Babe, tha-"

Hermione laughs so hard that Fleur has to catch her around the middle. She's halfway slung into the taxi, still useless with mirth.

"Oh, my," she finally manages. "Thanks, doll. Needed that."

"I wasn't aware zat was a joke. Land down under, zey say. Yet zis country is right side up. I zink we should ask for a refund, 'Ermione."

The driver--a scruffy twenty-something fellow--tilts the mirror so he can look at Hermione.

"Destination, luv? Or are you just gonna let the French bird practice her standup? Not that I mind, your friend's a damn sight easier to look at than the usual tourist."

_French bird? If only you knew…_

"Sydney College of Dentistry. And eyes off _my woman,_ wanker."

He sputters into his coffee cup but to his credit, he looks embarrassed when he pats himself dry.

"Right then, luv. Dentist's college."

He maneuvers them smartly into traffic, swishing through a precise set of on and off ramps with the measured confidence of a wizard working a deadly and unpredictable spell.

It's baking hot and late in the afternoon when they pull up. Students are either in class, under trees, or clinging to the still-shadowed parts of the food court.

Hermione passes three gold coins--reworked galleons--forward to him and swipes her credit card through the fare meter.

"That's our fare so far, and enough to keep you around. Agreed?"

"Luv, I'll get in a high-speed car chase for this kind of tip."

"Let's hope not."

She scrambles out and pops Fleur's door open--if she's going to be territorial, she's going to own it--and Fleur's pale hand slinks out into the sun like she's Ingrid Bergman pulling up to the Oscars red carpet and stepping into the camera flashes.

Hermione lifts it to her lips.

"Milady."

She shuts the door and the driver points to a loop where he can park, seeking agreement.

"Sounds good. See you there."

"Were you being serious, before?" Hermione asks.

"We are _witches,_ 'Ermione. An upside-down country would not be ze strangest zing for us."

She has a point.

 **\-----Dr. Jean Granger-----  
(currently Monica Wilkins)  
**(twelve days after the battle)

There's two young women in the back of her classroom she doesn't recognize. The blonde is the sort of woman that doesn't happen in the wild. Maybe she fell asleep and woke up in the middle of a movie where a supermodel goes back to school.

The brunette though...the brunette is _scary_ in a way she can't place.

Redoubling her focus on the patient--the poor sod volunteered, after all--she adjusts the camera so that her class can see the inside of his mouth on screen.

"As you can see here, in extreme cases, the osteoblastoma is visible through the gums and even can displace the tooth above it. With this cancer, the prognosis following surgery and aggressive gamma-knife treatment is excellent. So if you have to get bone cancer, get this one because it stays where it starts for a long time. Accept no substitutes."

Several of her students titter at the joke. Hopefully, the rest of them won't go into practicing on patients because if you can't laugh at that, you're not good with people.

"Thank you, Mr. Z. Next time my class sees you, you'll have some fake teeth and a jawbone that isn't dodgy."

"dur felcom," he mumbles with a mouth full of tools and tubes.

"All right, everyone. Review the packets I assigned and the hospital policies. You'll be shadowing some of the interns next week, so get some sleep, don't eat too much garlic and be ready to deal with actual, real-live human patients face to face."

It's an upper level class, only about twenty. They file out, talking amongst each other briefly. One of the girls just had a baby, and someone fetched it from the daycare to show off.

Finally, it's just her and the strangers.

"Can I help you?"

The brunette _shatters,_ dropping to her knees and sobbing.

"'Ermoine, of course zis is 'ard."

The blonde smiles at her—a bit sadly, maybe—and raises some sort of stick.

" _Recordatio reparo._ "

Husband. Husband? Husband, apparently. Holding her hand. Screaming. Pain. Baby crying. Tears. Little girl. Perfect. Her perfect girl. First words. Favorite story. First book. Favorite book to read back to her mum. Skinned knee. Tears. First day of school. More tears, only mum's this time. Teachers. Daughter too clever. Shouldn't answer so many questions. Letter of complaint. Switch schools. Owls nesting all over the property. Letter. Witches. Witches? Her daughter is a witch. Her daughter is a prodigy. Stern woman in tall hat. Says daughter is the best she's taught in a half-century. Her daughter coming home after the first year. Brighter. Happier. More than ever. Birthdays, Easter, Christmas. Letter from the school. Daughter hurt. Panic. Daughter gets better, thanks to her friends. Clumsy boy. Scruffy boy. Her friends saved her. Arguments. Arguments. Arguments. Daughter is right, she can handle this. Goes back. Birthdays, Easter, Christmas. Daughter writes home about first crush. Birthdays, Easter, Christmas. Daughter's first crush bangs on the door. Says lunatic teacher is torturing students. Pissed off. No options. Daughter comes back with bandaged hand. Daughter's first crush hands her a bloody brooch with a cat on it. Don't ask questions. Daughter safe. Daughter's first crush protective. Birthdays, Easter, Christmas. Visiting France. Good lord, so many blondes. Welcomed. New family, maybe. Jokes about in-laws.

Her birthday.

Easter.

Blank.

Waking up in Heathrow. Getting on a plane. Husband not with her. Dead? Maybe dead? Doesn't remember. Letter in hand. Give letter to dean. Teach a few classes. Teaching better than her old practice.

Strange women in her classroom...

...staring into a swirl of blue mist at the end of a stick.

"She is coming out of ze trance, 'Ermione."

"Mum?" the brunette whimpers.

"Hermione?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back, Jean! Thanks for joining us!  
> \-----  
> Remember, kids! It's not a post-Hogwarts story without catching up with Hermione's mum.


	4. Wandless Magic and Wild Women

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where a bloke who works in a gym ended up in way over his head.

_The power of magical tattoos is often overlooked. It's old magic and it's bloody magic, to be sure. But it's as ordinary and human as lighting fires and hunting game. Our muggle ancestors must have had an inkling of it, with all their 'eating the heart of an enemy' traditions._

_Just ask any of the Icelandic communes what having a dragon blood tattoo can accomplish, or ask a Transylvanian what strigoi dust in a wound is like. The aurors are lucky it's an overlooked field of study._

\-- Joanna Bones, head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Self-Modification, Transfiguration, Editing and Mangling review board (DMLE-STEM)

* * *

 **\-----Dr. Jean Granger-----**  
(fourteen days after the battle)

Psychosis isn't a good look on a dentist. Worse on a professor.

She'll be lucky if she can sleep with the lights on after this, let alone face first-day-of-term jitters.

First, her baby girl tells her there was a godlike dark wizard with a nasty hobby of fascism and genocide, targeting the children of muggles like Hermione and he's had her in his sights since second year. Then she tells her that the reason she wiped her memory was because if Jean was severed from knowledge of the magical world, hunting the basically-defenseless woman down would be impossible even for a wizard who had swatted three jetliners from the sky like gnats. Then she tells her that her poor Tom was on one of those flights after staying behind to chat with his mate Roger from back at Cambridge. 

Then Fleur tells her that Hermione--the same girl who broke up schoolyard fights because she hated the idea of others in pain—practically dissected a woman who gave her that nasty scar. Then she tells her that her little girl dealt with the wizard in question where even the iconic Harry Potter could not. Then Fleur takes over the story for a clearly shaken Hermione and tells her that Hermione went one on-one with the lunatic and ended up making soup of his head with a fortune teller's ball.

Up to that point, she was able to absorb it. Hermione was brilliant and her teachers said she was a strong witch. McGonagall visited from time to time and she seemed especially effusive on that topic.

As of dessert course, they've covered a war her daughter was instrumental in winning, dealing the final blow when everyone expected her to flee. More like the bomb dropped on Hiroshima than the Siege of Berlin, if Fleur's awed rendition was valid. A carefully arranged gathering of energies becoming an unstoppable destructive force in a split second.

The point where her mind said ' _no more, I refuse_ ' was waiting for their check, when Hermione and Fleur sheepishly explained the sexual effects magic can have on bystanders. It sounded like fetishist's wishful thinking until Hermione accidentally demonstrated by flicking her hand to stop a waitress from wiping out on a puddle near the kitchens. Somehow the glasses stayed upright and went back on the tray. Fleur didn't stay upright. Her body hunched over, her breathing sped up and her slender fingers gripped the table like death. Her tan-gold feathers–-thankfully, they'd already covered veela–-burst out on her arms and neck in the equivalent of a schoolboy tenting his trousers.

Wandless and wordless magic is harder. Who knew?

"Mum?"

They're outside now, waiting for a taxi and Hermione's coat is over her shoulders.

"Sorry, dear, I was miles away."

"It's a lot," Hermione agrees, bouncing on the soles of her feet. She pulls a silver cigarette case out of her pocket, removes one and fishes in her bag for a lighter.

She plucks the cigarette out of Hermione's fingers.

"I can't believe you, young lady! Cigarettes have killed more people than war this century."

"Zat was marijuana," Fleur drawls. "She is just precise on ze wrapping paper."

"Oh."

"Veela blend. Contains dust of what we call ze maiden's mushroom. Zis means it 'as ozzer...qualities."

"Such as?"

Hermione grins.

"Such as don't smoke it unless you've met a nice bloke this last year, he's in town, and you have his phone number. Trust me when I say it's not a normal state of mind. Way beyond physical. The effects aren't something you can deal with with a stack of batteries."

"Gimme."

Fleur looks at Hermione, who's slack mouth is probably a foot away from the joint.

"You will catch flies," Fleur jokes, taking the joint and handing it to Jean. "I like 'er, 'Ermione."

- **\----** **Hermione Granger** **\-----**  
(fourteen days after the battle)

"You don't understand, Fleur!"

"Zis is a simple concept, my love."

"My...mum...is...having...sex!"

"Good."

"Good?"

Fleur shrugs.

"Zere are two Granger women in ze world. Zat brings us to nine wonders of ze world. So I would zink it a terrible waste if ze elder one were not enjoying 'erself."

"I _really_ hope it's not one of her students."

Fleur puffs on her just-lit joint and then tucks it in the ashtray.

"No, I zink it is ze young man at ze fitness center."

"The university fitness center? Those are _all_ students."

"No, ze one with ze photo on her wall. Notting 'ill Fitness somezzing."

"Her old gym in London?"

"Zat one."

"Ze man with ze arm around her shoulder? I know ze sort of 'appy look someone 'as," Fleur jokes.

She shifts fully, stretching her wing across the hotel room to cup Hermione's bare body and yanking her towards the bed. Her fingers skim the edge of the towel and duck under, tracing along skin just a bit too warm after the shower.

"...when zey have somezzing like zis…"

Her fingers find Hermione's folds and the air leaves her lover's body in a gasp.

"In ze palm of ze 'and."

- **\----** **Dr. Jean** **Granger** **\-----  
** (fourteen days after the battle)  
  


Richard's tanned, chiseled body collapses on top of hers. His pulse thunders under her palm where she grips his bicep.

"Bloody hell, luv!"

It'd been ages too long. Her and Tom had been drifting in opposite directions for some time. He was focused on accelerating his career, she was keen to focus on Hermione and supporting her from the edges of her secret world. They'd decided to split a couple years before Hermione deliberately scrambled their brains. They'd already done the paperwork, in fact. The plan had been to sit Hermione down at Christmas during her seventh year, calmly explain the divorce, and then offer her the choices of either staying in the house with her father, Jean's condo, or a small apartment of her own.

The plan had been for Richard to meet her on New Year's and then to move in after term unless it completely broke Hermione's heart to have him do that. No plan survives first contact with one's extremely gifted and quite literally magical offspring. She got out-planned and she's alive so she can't complain. Granger ladies are planners, that much she already knew.

Her memories of Richard _mostly_ remained through the block, though he forgot how serious it had been getting because all of that was wrapped up in him listening to her gush about Hermione.

Sex with Richard had been great, better in some ways than back when she was in school. Things she'd hated doing back then became fun because for younger men, it was all in good fun. Doing it or liking it didn't make her a slut or change the dynamic. Giving a knobber was something she could do or not do and neither one made her less or more. Though he'd spent enough time with her legs over his shoulder that it quickly became something to do if only to keep him hooked. Then the stupid lout made sucking him off fun because of the cute little noises and how powerful it felt to her. Ask for a bit of buggering and someone her age would get all wrapped up in people thinking he was gay. Richard lifted her chin with his finger, told her not to be embarrassed and blushingly admitted that he'd wanted to have a woman _bugger him_ someday (seriously, blokes his age even invented a term for it) but he'd really have to be in love to trust her because it still wasn't something blokes talked about at the pub.

Before this all went sideways and she disappeared, he'd really been in love with her for a while.

Fortunately, he remembered her and the girl he was seeing–-two years old than him, not ten--was nothing serious. How he pivoted out of their date politely and got to Sydney in three hours is an interesting question but she's not complaining. That mushroom is no joke. She didn't know it was possible to dehydrate herself between the sweat and the squirting without taking the edge off fully but it apparently _is_ and that's a discovery to file away along with some questions about dosage.

He brushes her sweaty hair off his forehead and replaces it with his lips.

"I'm never letting this go so long again," he jokes. "Clearly an unfucked dentist only grows sexier and more dangerous with age."

"Don't you forget it."

He laughs, finally recovering enough to dismount her and stagger away to dispose of the condom. Pity about the condom but that's something they can't just pick up where they left off, not without getting retested.

"How's Hermione?"

Somehow, even her scrambled head, the rules about what she can tell other muggles remain clear.

"Had to take a year off school."

"That's a shame. I don't think I got around to hearing what her favorite subject was."

"Transfigur-SHIT!"

Richard curses too and there's a thump in the bathroom.

"You all right?"

"PEACHY!" he calls back.

"Get in here this instant!"

He's managed to blush several shades darker than his lickable bronze tone.

"You're a wizard."

It isn't a question.

"Yeah."

"What, the ministry send you to keep an eye on me?"

"No! If they'd asked, I'd have told them which hole to put their wand in. No, I just saw this amazing single mum--well, not exactly single--having a cry after spin class. Prettiest woman I ever saw. Couldn't quite peg why, at the time. Somehow I never got it in my thick skull that _the Hermione Granger_ was the daughter of _my Jean Granger."_

"How the hell not?"

"Old-school names like Hermione are still pretty common in the wizarding world. Name like that plus a not-unheard of muggle name plus your daughter not having dropped out of a crack in the sky on the back of a dragon and confronted me...I sort of assumed."

"Hermione simply can't be a normal name."

"Tell that to Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. One of the most famous families in Britain is the Pendragons, if you can believe it. The surname faded because there was a generation where all the children were out of wedlock, but the line is traceable. Called the Peverells and Prewetts now. Though I think they're down to two unmarried kids in their forties each. I wanted to tell you but…"

"Rules."

"Yeah, luv. Rules. So many fucking rules with those dusty old bats at the Ministry."

He huffs.

"That does help me put it together, though."

"How so?"

"I like older women. But I didn't just _like_ you. I touched your hand and I _needed_ you. It's your magic, love. To have given birth to someone like Hermione? You'd have to be either the daughter of a famous bloodline, at most two generations off, or a the matriarch of a new line. You're a powerhouse yourself. You just can't access it. Like putting a concrete lid on a reservoir."

"Or a subterranean ocean," he mutters.

"What I had but couldn't use, Hermione unlocked?"

He gives her a smile.

"Kids are magic."

"Does this change us? I'd say I was furious but then again, a couple of the families of Hermione's school friends from before she went to Hogwarts had a witch mum or dad and I never realized it. I can't get too mad at you for following rules meant to keep my daughter safe. Long as you didn't lie to me about anything else."

Richard swallows a lump.

"Can't think of anything, no."

"Great. Get back into bed. You're going to work it off."

"Right!" he babbles. "Give me a minute, gorgeous. Now I'm just going to have to figure out to adjust to the fact that I've been shagging the mother of the Witch-Who-Won for pushing three years without realizing it and trying not to think about what she could to do me if she's pissed."

"Focus on what _I'm going to to do you_ if you're not on your back, hard, and obedient in the next two minutes."

He throws her a mocking salute.

She leans over off the side of the bed and fumbles around to find his jeans. There's an invisible mass along the left thigh. Like something solid that can be touched but can't be seen.

"Wand?"

"Yeah. Touch the thicker end and say 'here goes' three times and the charm will fade."

She does and sure enough, the invisible shape opens up like a camera shutter at one end.

The wand is short--his less impressive instrument--completely straight and unadorned except for a knob so it doesn't slip out of the hand. Hermione could tell her all sort of things about what kind of wand this is, and how the wand 'choosing him' tells her things about her mother's boyfriends' personality.

No, her new step-dad's personality.

She needs to get back at her tricky daughter as soon as she can.

"One minute left!" she hollers.


	5. Mother's Lament

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where all mothers share one goal...

_"When people wonder why ancient wizards thought they deserved to be kings, I remind them how scary a conjured storm must have been to the frightened masses. When they ask me why ancient witches were worshiped as goddesses, I show them a picture of Dahlia Black-Rosier at 166 and her muggle bedwarmer and ask them to pick which one had six more biological children before they died."_

_"The pureblood families may be absolute monsters half the time, but they're well preserved and neatly groomed all the same."_

From an article on magical aging--particularly _witch_ aging--in the Stonehenge Shouter, an twice-yearly British wizarding newspaper

* * *

**\-----Narcissa Malfoy (nee Black)-----**

(sixteen days after the battle)

"He passed in the night, Lady Malfoy. My deepe-"

She throws the teakettle into the floo, scattering the Azkaban warden's flaming image up the chimney and ending the call. The five other floos are locked shut, though one of them has an unlock charm and a bloodline filter woven into its bricks for her and Draco's use.

Her new maid pokes her head around the corner from the main kitchen. A muggle named Tess. Thank Merlin that Tess isn't the curious sort. She never wondered why is there barely space in the shed for one car, but there's enough floos in the master kitchen to move an army.

"Anything you need, ma'am?" Tess asks.

After the loss of standing the family took when it came to light how much their house-elf had contributed to saving the world and how Lucius had treated Dobby, they really should have looked into emancipating Bitsy and her line straight out. Draco's absentminded gift just saved time. She signed the papers at Gringotts yesterday anyway, in case a newly freed, directionless and probably bored Bitsy ends up hungover and pregnant any time soon.

As a servant, Tess is superior until the instant she needs to teleport and that's not something she asked Dobby for more than three times in her years here.

Narcissa blows her lungs empty and forces her fists to open. She sets down the cordless telephone--now that was an embarrassing chat with Arthur Weasley--she was issued when applying for muggle domestic staff. Tess helps her keep it charged, which is the only reason it _is_ charged.

"No, thank you. Difficult phone call."

"Ah. I hate when those happen."

No magical families would have their daughter help her keep up this manor for all the gold in Gringotts. So Narcissa put an ad in a muggle paper and ended up with a polite, sharp-eyed, extremely efficient girl for what amounts to ten galleons a month on the Gringotts to Bank of London metal exchange. Based on the look in Tess' eyes when she explained the salary, Narcissa suspects she's grossly overpaying even though six galleons would barely buy a workman's room in the Leaky Cauldron.

Tess refers to herself in the first person, using full English sentences and she doesn't clank around as much as Dobby or his father did, not by miles. She should've had an actual human—muggle or otherwise—on staff years ago.

Really, Tess mostly does laundry and cooks. Two things that Narcissa had never done in her life and that couldn't be done entirely with charms. A few afternoons putting _Witch Weekly's_ articles on basic household charms into practice gave her a marching army of animated dusters, brooms, scrub brushes, mops and the like. She doesn't know how to scrub the tiles around her beloved clawfoot tub. Couldn't with a dragon's claw at her throat. She knows how to teach a scrub-brush how to do it, though.

The locking charm on the commuting floo chimes once. One chime for the lord, two for the lady, three for the little ones...or so the song goes.

"Mother?"

Narcissa turns slowly, half afraid it will be the husband she worked so hard to wall off emotionally and not the son she adores. Three minutes on their sixth anniversary are the closest Lucius ever came to being _useful_ in his entire life. She spent the next nine months on that project and eighteen years since.

Such is the witch's burden.

"My son," she chokes, opening her arms.

Draco's eyes narrow and he studies her for an awkward heartbeat or three. He looks exactly like his father when he's cross or confused.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes," she sniffs. "Long day."

When he's being kind, he looks more like his Uncle Sirius than she'd ever admit to a soul.

"You?"

Grimacing, he works his injured arm out of his coat's sleeve.

"Better when I get my arm chopped off," he grunts. "Odd thing to say, isn't it?"

The various brass gears, spigots and dials twisted tight around his left arm shimmer with blue flame. The corruption that started in all the Dark Marks when Lord Voldemort was defeated nearly killed poor Draco instantly. She cast a stunning charm on him, followed by the nastiest _petrificus_ she could manage and a bunch of necromantic curses that thankfully the Ministry didn't detect. Whatever was wrong, the blood in that arm needed to _stay_ in that arm and dead tissue doesn't pass blood.

Lucius wasn't affected, probably that ghastly-smelling potion he'd been chugging.

"The new clockwork arms are supposed to be amazing," he adds, hissing when his mostly-dead left arm bumps the table as he fumbles for a tumbler with his right hand.

"Granger's probably designed them. Can't imagine she's got much left in wizard gold."

"Doubt she's had time. She's out of the country," Narcissa adds without meaning to.

"I didn't know you were pen pals."

"She saved your life, Draco. Even if there was no life debt, her status would be greater than yours or mine could _ever be_ after what she's done. I'm the last lady of one of the twenty-eight. I'd be a fool not to befriend her if I possibly can. Potter did amazing things. We both know that Voldemort was more than a man until Potter's last duel with him. He had to die twice. Harry Potter broke a god's back but he died doing it."

Draco grunts.

"And Granger finished the job and _lived,_ " he grumbles.

He slides another glass over with a trickle of whisky in it.

"The girl who lived," he jokes.

"To the girl who lived."

"Haven't seen you since they separated us, my son."

Draco shrugs.

"Mostly you'd have seen me in a hospital bed, or strapped to this nonsense piece of wicker in Saint Mungo's. Apparently getting the arm off without letting the curse move into my heart is quite the challenge. I can honestly say I've never seen so many arcanoscopes in one place."

"You went to the funeral. Potter's."

He nods.

"He actually left me something," Draco chuckles.

"What?"

"Basilisk skin. Some rubbish about reinventing myself."

Draco isn't taking this second chance seriously. Why would he? He doesn't know what a second chance looks like. He's always had as many chances as Lucius had galleons to buy them. Her boy loves her dearly but he's not as close to her as he once was. He didn't fully trust either her or Lucius--why would he, when she couldn't protect him _from_ Lucius--so Narcissa knows she has to tread lightly to correct his path.

"What about you, mother? Did they treat you all right?"

"Yes, quite. Escorted me home. Put Longbottom and the youngest Prewett girl on watch here. I suppose someone thought we'd be less likely to misbehave with purebloods stalking the grounds."

"Violet Prewett?" Draco jokes. "She's what...eleven?"

"Thirteen. Now she's Violet Snapdragon, actually. Perfect little English rose. Spitting image of the Lady of Avalon if ever I saw one. You'd immediately know she was Rose's girl but never in a million years think that Charlotte actually carried her. It's like her mothers pulled her out of a tapestry of Camelot."

"She's a bastard," Draco scoffs.

"She's the re-legitimized daughter of _Charlotte fucking Snapdragon_ and _Rose fucking_ _Prewett,_ Draco. The Snapdragons are an extremely well-tended line. Half-bloods and muggle-born husbands, yes. Not a single squib. Ever. Not a single lightweight, according to my old Hogwarts books."

"You're too young to realize but before Dumbledore, there were other champions of the Light. They looked to the Snapdragons first, Prewetts second and then all others to save them. For thirteen centuries, having _anyone_ named Snapdragon on your side was like having Albus Dumbledore on your side. As for your insult, need I remind you that legitimized means legitimate? No qualifications. She is now as legitimate as you are."

"She carries the Snapdragon name on her shoulders. Poor creature. Don't let the muggle queen hear you insulting one of the last living relatives of Arthur Pendragon's youngest son. She might have you fed to those odd dogs of hers," Narcissa jokes.

Draco shivers.

"She's young but she's been homeschooled like everyone in the family. Molly Prewett was a black sheep long before she became Molly Weasley, my son."

"So before you try anything, I'd recommend you go take a look at the carcass of the necroanaconda that got out of the crypt and tried to eat her. It's spattered over the back four acres."

"We're done fighting, my boy. Do you hear me? Say it back so I know you mean it."

"I hear you. We, House of Malfoy, are done fighting."

Hopefully he means it.

After a near-miss with Muggle police and a newly minted, badly-trained Auror, she fled with Lucius, Draco and Millicent Bulstrode on a muggle train that paralleled the trail of the Hogwarts Express as far as Surrey. She thought they were fine. They beat the ministry and were on untraceable muggle transport, in cash. 

It was a pack of Hufflepuffs led by Amelia Bones' little girl who captured them, three hours later. Lucius and Millicent's father leapt into action—more impressive than Lucius had been since she met him at fifteen—but as the saying goes 'the Bones always break'.

The newly-named Lady Bones proved herself in less than a minute. Swatted Lucius aside like an errant bludger with three flicks of the wand and when Bulstrode charged her, she threw out a fire charm with her off hand as she kept a intricately curved shield charm going with her wand. It was so powerful that the mud between them bubbled and the paint on the fenceposts curled and charred. By the time he was within four paces of her he was nothing but ash and melted boot leather.

Surrounded by flame and smeared with blood, Susan Bones was every invader's nightmare: a ginger giantess stalking the hills of Scotland with a rightful cause to anger.

Her mother's daughter, indeed.

Millicent threw herself into the mud in surrender so fast that she cracked her nose.

It was their turn to surrender or die.

Draco had her brains and reflexes and his father's brute strength but he could barely stand. Either he toppled forward from the pain, or he deliberately surrendered. No way to tell.

Narcissa didn't bother handing over her wand. She cracked it in her sleeve and dropped the pieces. Narcissa was part of the Lost Generation of pureblood witches. Too young to have been trained because of the threat of Grindelwald like her eldest sister Bellatrix and too old to have been part of the revival of women's and girl's dueling societies in the mid-1960s that eventually led to military miracles like Head Auror Amelia Bones. 

She knew she was nothing in a fight and no doubt Susan Bones knew from her mother that Narcissa was pushed away from rough magic. 

Susan snapped her fingers, pointed to Draco and her team leapt into action. By their robes, these were just her roommates in Hufflepuff but they moved like an hardened Auror team raiding a dark wizard's lair. Narcissa would know. She's been in the next room for that.

They were unceremoniously apparated back to Hogwarts where the half-breeds everyone called 'veela' were tending to the wounded and Hermione Granger, the mudblood that everyone had underestimated--fatally, in most cases--was striding about giving orders to anyone she saw. One look at her made a joke of the philosophy of blood purity. Who cares what her name was? Every living thing in sight deferred to her without a whisper, including her intended--leader of the veela contingent, Narcissa later learned--because survival of the fittest had demonstrated that in that place on that day, Hermione Granger stood above all.

Granger took one look at Draco, shouted at one of the veela--not her own--and dragged them into the ruined remnants of the hospital wing. She transfigured a coat hanger into some kind of runic contraption, charged it with fiendfyre and inserted it into Draco's arm through an incision made with a nasty-looking copper athame. A dark witches' weapon and probably older than the castle, maybe even older than the smelting of bronze.

The second darkest spell known to wizard kind but the heroine of the light used it without hesitation for battlefield triage. As she reminded Narcissa 'dark clings to dark' and that was all she could think of to slow the spread.

When Draco's fever broke and he _recognized her_ , Narcissa called Granger back and demanded to place herself under a vassal's vow. Even if she wasn't utterly beaten tactically, the sheer power and the quick thinking Granger displayed made her the lady and Narcissa the peasant.

Granger, naturally, hadn't heard of that vow but wasn't in the mood to argue with a dark witch offering to surrender.

Bless that girl.

\----- **Ginny Weasley** **\----**

(seventeen days after the battle)

Ginny turns sideways to look at herself in the mirror. She's barely lost any of her Quidditch trim, despite Gabrielle shoveling sinfully creamy French food into her and the mediwitch she's working with to go pro as a chaser telling her to drop to three days a week. Her abdominals don't show through anymore but Madam Hooch was always getting on her about hydration. That's probably just actually taking care of herself.

It's a silly thing to want but Ginny wants to _look_ pregnant already. She wants to look like she's got her and Harry's babies inside her. She wants people to see the bump in her mourner's robes at the ministry-sponsored funeral so they will look at her, notice the Lordly seats her revenge has emptied in the dark part of the Wizgamot and not say a _fucking word_ about the man she loved.

She wants to be able to see changes in her shadow, her clothes, her skin that remind her of what she almost had.

"EXPELLIARMUS!" shouts Gabrielle from the front room.

There's a huge _crack_ sound and the bedroom floor shakes.

Scrambling into the sweatpants Hermione gave her—muggles have witches beat dead on comfy clothes—she hurries downstairs.

Narcissa Malfoy is sprawled on the parlor floor, unconscious. Gabrielle Delacour towers over her--such as a five-foot-even dollop of a woman can 'tower' over anything--with one hand shifted to talons and sizzling with flame and another holding her wand out. She's not been able to replicate Fleur's spectacular golden-feathered wings yet. Not for lack of trying and lack of scaring the neighborhood's dogs in the process.

"You hurt?" Ginny asks.

"I'm so sorry!" Gabby babbles. "I don't know 'ow she got in!"

"Gabs, it's fine. She's a Black. The way the wards are written, any member of the House of Black who enters with peaceful intentions can come in. I think it kept Bellatrix out only because she was so barking mad she forgot what peaceful intentions were."

"Ze wards are faulty, zen. She is blonde. Ze Blacks, famously, are not. Zey get zis trait from ze Rosiers from which zey descend in France."

Ginny draws her wand out of her sports bra--again, miles better than girl's quidditch attire--and points it at Narcissa.

_"Finite incantum."_

Nothing.

_"Finite incantum enduri!"_

_"Finite incantum enduri maxima!"_

The iconic brown waves with blonde streaks look that Narcissa popularized at salons as a young woman fade. Left behind is straight hair, shiny as can be and as black as black gets. It's actually much prettier like this, in Ginny's opinion. Like the sort of villain the Brothers Grimm made up. Skin white as snow, hair black as night. Poison apple enters from stage right.

"Whew," Ginny wheezes.

"Wand," Gabrielle demands. "Wand. Go rest."

She snaps her taloned fingers, the collision of claw on claw making a startlingly loud clang. She takes the wand away and points to the nearest armchair.

"Yes, _mum_. How was I supposed to know her hair-dye charm was so powerful and had run continually for thirty years and counting?"

\-----

"Wake up, Lady Malfoy."

Ginny reaches over with the tip of her practice broomstick and nudges her intruder in the stomach.

"Wake up."

"Ergh…"

Narcissa lifts her head slightly.

"What in Merlin happened?"

She looks around.

"Ah. I misdialed the floo somehow. You have my thanks for bringing me inside."

Gabrielle scoffs.

"You did not misdial," Ginny assures her. "Gabby stunned you before you stepped out."

Narcissa rubs her neck.

"Morgana's teeth, young lady! I don't even remember seeing the room. You move quick."

Gabrielle stomps back in--it's cute, how territorial her nursemaid is--and holds out two cups.

"Tea!" she snaps.

"Thank you, Heiress Delacour."

There's a pop in the corner of the room by the umbrella basket.

"Kreacher is del-"

"KREACHER!" Ginny bellows.

She pinches the bridge of her nose.

"Go alphabetize the family library. In reverse. Based on the Sumerian alphabet. Lady Malfoy and I need a hex to use on our enemies."

The maddening, hateful little elf seems overjoyed.

"Kreacher lives to serve!" he gushes, popping out.

Narcissa stares after him, looking shocked.

"That's Kreacher? He was…"

She frowns.

"He's angrier than I remember. Seemed barmy, but then again he was getting a bit mushy between his ears when I was a girl. Always pleasantly surprised when I'd come home after Hogwarts and mother hadn't beheaded him yet. Bellatrix was the only one of us who truly enjoyed his company. He and I could at least chat while I brushed my hair. He certainly never treated me like he did Andromeda."

Ginny huffs.

"Well, he only got more senile, irritating, and nasty since, I assure you. More than once the only reason he hasn't been turned into a grease stain is that Hermione has far more mercy in her heart for the likes of him than he ever would show her."

"Pity. Clan Knifenose is actually a proud elf family, in their own way. Wonder what he'd be like if he'd been bound to the Bones?"

"We do not bind our elves at all," Gabrielle sniffs. "Zat is barbaric."

"You have to spend all that gold somewhere," Narcissa replies. "The Three Families of Paris could buy out the rest of Wizarding Europe if they wanted."

Ginny sips her tea.

"Fortunately, Sumerian is one of the alphabets that doesn't have the right letters to actually alphabetize the collection. It's not possible unless I go up there and make some executive decisions."

"Now...you're not at the top of the list of people I don't want to deal with ever again for the rest of my life. You're not at the bottom, either. But you're definitely on the list. So why are you intruding on the Lady of Black's period of mourning, Narcissa _Black_?"

To her credit, Narcissa cringes at being reminded of her rudeness.

"I heard about the pregnancy."

"And?" Ginny demands.

"And?" Narcissa scoffs. "And?"

"And those are my grand-nephew and grand-niece! I'm of little use to House Malfoy any longer, not that I miss it much. Long as I can keep Draco from pairing up wrong—assuming he does pair up—I can offer no more. But I'm a _Black,_ you silly gi-wise Lady Ginerva. Malfoy is what's in my name. Black is what's in my bones."

"And you decided to downsize? Done with big manors?"

Through some magic Ginny's never heard of, Narcissa Malfoy is _crying_ and acting like her feelings are hurt. Based on how the Slytherins whispered about her, she had no reason to think that Narcissa could cry. Happy tears, maybe, if someone was torturing a puppy. Not these big, messy, honest and rather Molly Weasley-like tears.

The woman who held dinner parties for Death Eaters and bribed Aurors by the baker's dozen is bawling because Ginny Weasley is not letting her stay.

"I decided," she croaks. "That I wanted to help the next generation of Blacks."

"The main reason you're not in Azkaban is that standing next to Draco and begging him to come to you for his safety isn't a crime. We can't find anything you did that's criminal but frankly, I think you didn't do anything at all. Made tea and swept up after your husband's cronies, I imagine. So forgive me if I don't want the wife of the that monster's right hand man near the last bit of Harry I have left."

She lifts her wand.

"I'm going to forcibly apparate you to the street in front of your manor."

"Wait! Don't!" Narcissa pleads. "That was always Bellatrix!

"What in Merlin's ass are you on about?"

"Lucius was always jealous of my sister's place with Vold-Tom. With Tom. I don't think either of them had a clue what love was but I can assure you they did like to rub things together. Or sit naked watching muggles be tortured together. I've broken four Pensieves trying to drain those memories."

If morning sickness hadn't already emptied her, that mental image would make her throw up.

"Lucius was funding it, true. One more business to him. But Bellatrix enjoyed it. Lucius? Lucius didn't enjoy anything other than people knowing his name before he met them."

Ginny lowers her wand.

"I've heard that about him. Tha…"

"That my parents offered me because Lucius' father had money and mine didn't? That my being on his arm was mostly a sales pitch to Lucius? The Malfoys only became important the day their gold and my last name were combined."

"It'll be seven months before you're needed. Convince Hermione that this isn't a plot and that you'll be a good influence on my children and we'll talk after they're born."

She lifts her wand again and apparates Narcissa away before she can give her any more doubts or gurgly feelings in the pit of her stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why yes, I am part of the "Rehabilitate Narcissa Malfoy" and "sex therapy for MILFy Dark Witches" and "Slytherin Second Wives' Club" mailing lists, how could you tell?
> 
> Not Bellatrix, though. Getting blasted by Molly Weasley was the best possible option, given how gleefully bent she was.

**Author's Note:**

> ##  [Want to see the posh stuff? Want to see future chapters early?](https://rb.gy/b1fjhr)
> 
> ### Like it? Hate it? Have questions? Come holler at me about fanfic!
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